Koru

A koru is the Maori name for an unfurling fern that symbolizes new life, growth, strength, and peace to their culture. Yes, folks, we have returned from our trip to New Zealand. All I'm going to give you is this teaser for now, but there are more photos and notes on the way. I want to take some time and let the experience soak in before I blab too much. Check back again after life settles down some.

Spiderwoman

We're taking our training for New Zealand pretty seriously, aren't we? :-) Actually, R's indoor rock climbing expedition on Saturday was an unrelated, celebratory event for the completion of her team's Lego League season. Sounds like she had fun climbing. She used muscles she never knew she had... the soreness continues to remind her.

The big trip is nearly upon us. In order to foil your attempts at burglarizing our house, I'm not going to give you an exact timeline, but you can expect a larger than usual gap in my blog entries pretty soon. We will be away from computers and phones for quite a span. I will miss surfing the web, but being completely unavailable to work for the company that owns me the other 50 weeks of the year will be worth it.

It looks like I will be loaning out my new camera to the guy, Chris, who will be shooting the next Bud Light segment for me next week. Gulp. This makes me quite nervous. I trust Chris, and I know he has some experience with this type of equipment, but you never know what unforeseen accidents could happen without my over-protective eye on it. I feel like a parent watching his child get on the school bus for the first time. Is my beloved camera ready to go out into the scary world on it's own? Sooner or later every parent needs to let go, I guess.

Not a whole lot else is going on. Saturday night we attended our friend Gordon's 40th birthday party. For the record, R and I haven't hit the 30-year mark yet -- this just happens to be an older friend. On Sunday we paid one last visit to our new favorite store, Eastern Mountain Sports, for some last minute outdoor gear purchases. Rain pants? Check.

I sure hope we're ready for this trip. See you on the other side.

Bud Light Film Crew #14

I have some renewed enthusiasm for the BLFC after a phone call with the producer the other day. He told me the video's page has been consistently in the top three most visited pages on Out & About's website. So I guess some people out there are watching these things. We're not talking millions, but it's still a big audience for me.

Do your part to help contribute to the hit counter here: http://www.budlightfilmcrew.com/

I'm really proud of this one. It's sort of a montage of montages from the previous videos, yet it feels fresh and definitely breaks from our usual formula, mainly because it has a different purpose: We are promoting a search for new on-camera hosts. I'm curious to see what the tryouts will look like (American Idol-esque, perhaps?), but I'm not really in the loop on that. I won't be able to shoot the first of the two tryouts because of our upcoming vacation. Another guy is going to cover it for me. But I'm not exactly bothered by taking the month off.

A friend from work did the voice over in the video, and I think it sounds great. It's nice to have made that connection. You never know when you are going to need some professional sounding voice work.

I've been talking with a guy about another, documentary-style project that he wants me to shoot and edit. Right now we are aiming to do it in HD. That will be my first. If we go through with it, we'd have to edit at a studio since my home computer doesn't have the necessary processing power. Also, this might just be talk, but he's telling me this project will be aired on local cable. Again, we're not talking about millions of viewers, but if I can get something to air on any kind of broadcast TV, that would be very cool.